We recently came up with four questions you should ask your doctor before they prescribe you prescription painkillers and before that, editor Joe Carberry posited that in many cases, natural alternatives are a better, more sustainable path. Now we’re bringing in an expert to provide deeper insight on the prescription drug addiction epidemic in sports, the controversy over Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) and the disturbing increase of pill popping in youth sport. Chris Bell (@BigStrongFast) burst onto the film scene in 2008 with his award-winning documentary on steroids, Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Since then, he has collaborated with Peter Berg (of Deepwater Horizon and Friday Night Lights fame) on the acclaimed HBO series Trophy Kids, which explores the pitfalls of parents pushing their children excessively in sports. His most recent film, Prescription Thugs, exposes the strategies Big Pharma uses to get and keep us hooked on their products, and the tragic consequences this can have. Bell took a few minutes between trips to give The Inertia this exclusive take:
When people think about drug use in sports, they’re usually thinking about steroids, HGH and other performance enhancers. Do you think prescription drug addiction is more prevalent?
Absolutely. Some people estimate that up to 50 percent of elite athletes are taking performance enhancing drugs. I don’t know if that’s accurate but if it is I’d say a higher percentage have a prescription drug issue. Every time an athlete takes the field there’s a chance they’ll get hurt and the same goes for training. In some sports that risk is a lot higher and so you have players who are dealing with chronic pain and have to play through it. Their bodies and brains get used to the dose, so they have to take more to get the same benefits. That’s why some athletes are shoveling handfuls of painkillers, as I show in Prescription Thugs. It’s easier to get hold of them because unlike a lot of PEDs they’re not illegal. If you have a doctor write a prescription you have a hall pass.
Other than painkillers, what other prescription pills are typical in elite sport?
Xanax is a big one for players who find it hard to unwind from competition and aren’t using marijuana or alcohol. Some are also using other psych drugs to relax. Then there are the drugs that help athletes focus better. Before Major League Baseball only a couple of players had prescriptions for Adderall and Ritalin. When the league banned amphetamines that number surged to well over 100. Players will take anything and everything to get an edge, particularly if they know that all they have to do is go and see a doctor for a few minutes to get it.
Adderall is one of the drugs that was named in the recent leaks of a few high profile athletes’ medical records. What do you think of the Therapeutic Use Exceptions that some sports offer?
I’m never going to be one to say “He or she doesn’t need to take that” because many athletes do have a medical condition that requires medication. But it’s almost impossible to delineate between the benefits that certain substances provide in treating or managing athletes’ health issues and the advantages the pills can provide in a sporting context. If you take something to make you concentrate better, it’s going to work during everyday life and when you’re playing your sport. You can’t separate the two. So I think if governing bodies are going to clear certain drugs for medical conditions then they need to open these up to all their athletes. It can’t be one rule for one person and a different rule for others. They should also re-think what truly makes something “performance enhancing.” Is something that enhances your mind really that different from other drugs that impact your body?
Chris Bell Photo: Facebook
Is prescription drug abuse just a problem for adult athletes, or do you think it’s becoming an issue in youth sports as well?
Last summer the FDA lowered the minimum age for OxyContin use from 18 to 11, so I think you’re going to see a huge surge in its use among junior athletes. As I showed in Trophy Kids, parents are pushing their kids harder and harder in youth sports, and this leads to more injuries. You see pre-teens getting Tommy John surgery, particularly in baseball. The parents who are driving these kids so hard are going to want to get them back on the field as soon as possible, as are some coaches. My doctor in Manhattan Beach said his office is full of kids with sports injuries and parents wanting a quick solution to their pain. So of course they’re going to be taking painkillers to enable that. This is very disturbing to me.
If an athlete is in pain, what should they do instead of popping pills every day?
I think moving well and doing soft tissue work are huge when it comes to preventing and rehabbing injury. I know from experience that looking at your technique and trying to improve your mobility daily with a program like Kelly Starrett’s MobilityWOD is huge. There are also some legit natural alternatives to prescription painkillers. I was just in Washington DC protesting the DEA’s plans to ban the herbal analgesic kratom, which is made from an extract from a tree found in Southeast Asia. A friend who used to play in the NFL told me about it and I have found it to be very effective, so much so that my next film will be about it. But the pharmaceutical companies are spending hundreds of millions to squash anything natural that might be effective because these alternatives are a threat. They’ve obviously been very successful in eliminating competition, as their profits from 2002 to 2012 were $711 billion and are only increasing.
